We had spent several months planning the intensive 4 day workshop on Visual Studies so the events built throughout the week, providing examples of interdisciplinary and collaborative work, developing the participants’ skills and sense of possibility, teaching them to design and evaluate visual assignments, and creating opportunities for them to talk about their goals as teachers and scholars.
The participants were from a range of backgrounds and disciplines, and many of them were quite young, with a strong desire to explore innovative possibilities for scholarship and teaching as they develop their careers. I took every opportunity to learn about their work and share ideas formally and informally as we considered how visual work might enhance their teaching and research without distracting from the essential coverage of the field.
I was particularly pleased and touched that several graduate students and participants offered to “host” me in Moscow, taking me on long walking tours of the city and exploring museums with me. That enabled me to learn a great deal about their educational system, especially the distinct challenges and opportunities they face, and therefore adapt my presentations and workshops to the issues that were foremost in their minds. I found myself revising my presentations each night to include aspects that I had learned that day in workshops and conversations.
I believe the workshop showed the Russian teachers that research and teaching can intersect, that visual work can create strong educational and scholarly opportunities, and that interdisciplinary collaboration can be a benefit in our work. Their educational practice is quite content-based, and my goal was to demonstrate ways in which visual work is an essential part of the content of what we teach. My favorite moments were in the hands-on sessions when I showed challenging images and the participants actively examined them, pointing out details to one another with real excitement, sharing their (sometimes new) visual knowledge and their disciplinary perspectives. That sort of interdisciplinary collaboration is not their common practice, and we all found it extremely productive. At the end of my time there, several participants from diverse fields told me they plan to incorporate visual assignments, and they promised to send me their ideas and results – which made me very pleased indeed.
My commitment to visual studies as a powerful, essential interdisciplinary area is stronger than ever, and my sense that its benefits work globally is confirmed by my many conversations with the teachers in Moscow. I found the challenges of “translating” my experience into terms that would be valid and valuable to them a strong teaching lesson and a real global exchange. We had to listen to one another – across languages, disciplines, and experiences – to come up with innovative ideas to develop our personal and institutional definitions and applications of visual work. The Fulbright Program and Moscow State University provided the opportunity for compelling conversations and collaborations, and I left the Summer Seminar even more excited about international developments in visual studies, and the personal and professional impact of Fulbright’s program.
— Susan Jaret McKinstry